The presently disclosed subject matter relates to an apparatus for measuring contractile ability of a myocardial tissue.
A tissue structure having a stack of cell sheets and imitating a part of human heart is sometimes prepared for the purpose of application to a drug development study. Related art measuring apparatuses are used when evaluating contractile ability of such a tissue structure. For example, the measuring apparatus has a tissue structure having cardiomyocyte sheets wrapped around an outer circumference of a fibrin gel provided as a support member, and a measuring section configured to measure an action of the tissue structure as a pressure signal (see, e.g., Kubo H et al., “Creation of myocardial tubes using cardiomyocyte sheets and an in vitro cell sheet-wrapping device.”, Biomaterials. 2007 August; 28(24):3508-16. Epub 2007 Apr. 18).
JP2003-518571A also discloses a related measuring apparatus.
In the related art measuring apparatuses, however, measured pressure signals sometimes contain a number of noise components that are difficult to remove even with a signal processing technique, in which case it is difficult to accurately evaluate the contractile ability of the prepared tissue structure.